Abstract

Since the early 80’s, most authors are considering that to enable high‐average‐power operation at the highest laser efficiency, it is necessary to replace flash lamp pumped solid‐state lasers with laser‐diode pumped solid‐state lasers. This assumption is based on the fact that diode pumping has many advantages compared to flash lamp pumping that is seen as an old technology. Although it is very difficult to get true numbers, we shall show that Diode Pumped Solid State Lasers nearby the kW level have a moderate efficiency (<<10%), lower than expected. Flash lamp pumped fusion lasers are still in the run with a low efficiency but can access high beam quality and high harmonic generation efficiency. For the ELI project, we believe that considering a flash lamp pumped laser makes sense when the amplifier can run at 1 shot/mn to delivering 200J of green light. We shall show that it is an engineering problem to be solved with the help of: adaptive optic and large non linear crystals.